


Backseat Driver

by swordfishtrombones



Category: Stuber (2019)
Genre: M/M, Neoliberalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 02:44:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordfishtrombones/pseuds/swordfishtrombones
Summary: Let it be known that while I wrote this I don't condone it. Abolish the police!





	Backseat Driver

Vic sits on a bench across the street from Spinsters, shoulders tense, clutching his phone in his fist. Business has been booming, apparently; as Vic watches, a huge crowd of women leave together, all laughing and waving goodbye to each other as if they just did something enjoyable. 

Vic looks away. These women aren’t who he’s been waiting for.

Compulsively, he unlocks his phone to look at the screenshot again. He doesn’t know why he keeps pulling the image back up again, when he knows all it’s going to do is make his stomach clench with what he assumes must be anger, but he’s never been great at impulse control.

It’s a simple picture: just a man, arms crossed and smiling, standing in front of a flag. Except it’s not simple at all, because the flag is rainbow, and the man is Stu. 

Vic had almost choked on his bagel that morning when the ad first popped onto his phone. He wouldn’t have been shocked to learn that Stu was gay (he’d certainly spent enough time lecturing Vic on getting in touch with his emotions), but he wasn’t just gay––he was gay and dating Vic’s daughter. That’s a pretty bold move for someone who had, less than a year prior, witnessed Vic murder _numerous_ people.

Following a brief phone call with Nicole (a phone call that had ended with Nicole saying “Dad, it’s _not_ what you––” and Vic hanging up to pay closer attention to the blood pounding in his ears), he had gathered some intel (downloaded Instagram, watched the Spinster account story) and used his keen investigative abilities to ascertain that a board meeting was being held the following afternoon. Which is how he finds himself here, seething on a sidewalk bench, waiting for Stu to leave the building so Vic can kill him.

 The front door swings open again. Vic leans forward, squinting. Bingo. 

Stu looks healthier these days. Probably healthier than Vic has seen him since the first time they met, back before Stu had ever been hit in the face with a handgun, or held as a hostage, or had been in a car collision with violent criminals. Vic has never done him much good. He pulls his hood over his face and unlocks his phone again. Why start now.

It’s too fucking easy, Vic thinks as he clicks _Request Uber_ from the fake account he had made that morning _._ Nothing to it but timing and patience. He watches from across the way as Stu pauses, pulls out his phone, and gets into his car (a new one, obviously; white Corolla, ugly as hell, definitely neither silent nor deadly this time, but Stu must’ve had second thoughts about the wisdom of leasing).

Moments later Stu is pulling his ugly ass car around the corner, stopping where GPS tells him like a good boy. Vic pulls open the door and gets in the back.

This was the moment he thought might be tricky. Stu is so aggressively hospitable, Vic has assumed there’d be no way he’d be able to get into the car without immediately blowing his cover. But Stu just mutters “Make yourself comfortable,” and pulls away, not even looking at Vic, much less offering him imported chocolate.

They drive in silence. Vic leans back, staring a hole through the back of Stu’s head and breathing heavily, trying not to be disturbed by Stu’s remarkably sedated demeanor. He’s set his destination to an abandoned lot, shielded by development on all sides. Should be quiet on a Sunday afternoon. Vic almost has to smile at that. God’s day.

As they approach the destination he can feels Stu starting to get confused, craning forward to look at the desolate lot.

“You sure this is where you want?” Stu asks, breaking the silence at last. “Gotta say, not the most bumping spot in L.A.…” 

“I’m sure,” Vic says.

Stu visibly freezes. He brakes the car abruptly in the middle of the lot and raises his eyes, slowly, to the rearview mirror.

Their eyes connect in the reflection. It’s been awhile, Vic realizes, since he last made eye contact with someone.

“No!” Stu squawks. “Vic, _no!_ I will not go on a killing spree again! Do _not_ ask me!”

Vic growls low in his throat and reaches around the seat to grab a fistful of Stu’s shirt. “Shut the frick up. You and I need to talk.”

“I have a phone!” Stu is twisting against Vic’s grip. “Call me on my phone! We’ve been over this! Kidnapping people is _not_ nice!” 

“ _You_ need to explain something to me,” Vic says, pulling Stu forward so he’s forced to twist around and face the backseat. “Explain it real nice and simple, and maybe we’ll get out of here without losing any more teeth.”

“And why the threats,” Stu says weakly. “There are better ways…”

Vic grapples clumsily with one hand to retrieve his phone, shoving it at Stu’s face. “This,” he hisses. “Tell me what I’m looking at, Stuber.”

Stu blinks at it. “Uh. A neoliberal marketing campaign?”

“Who’s that in the picture? Tell me my eyes aren’t shot to shit, Stu. Tell me I know who this is.”

“That,” says Stu, “would be me.”

“You know, it’s real funny.” Vic barks a flavorless laugh. “Funny ‘cause, see, I thought you were dating my daughter.”

Understanding crosses Stu’s face. He groans.

“That’s right.” Vic releases his shirt roughly. “So _explain_ it to me. What exactly am I missing here.”

“It’s really not my place to––” Vic lunges forward again, and Stu throws his hands up by his face. “All right, all right! My god! Calm down for two minutes. We were never really dating.”

That does make Vic pause. “What?”

“Seriously, dude.” Stu is fixing his shirt nervously, moving with obviously jitteriness. “Have you seen your daughter? You think the only person she can bag is her dad’s kidnapped Uber driver? She’s _good. I’m_ the one you should be worried about.”

It’s not clicking. “But…” Vic frowns, rubs his forehead with his hands.

“She thought it’d be funny, man. I don’t know. You know I’m a pushover. We were talking about commissioning something from her for the studio, get a little culture in there––she said she’d cut us a deal if I pretended to be her boyfriend. Said you were always so overprotective, that you’d freak out. Gotta say, I wouldn't have agreed if I knew she meant freaking out like _this.”_

“Jesus.” Vic is shocked for one beat, and then he laughs out loud. “That little scamp.”

“See, I don’t get why you couldn’t have thought _that little scamp_ around the time you were deciding to come knock my teeth in,” Stu tells him. “Serious double standard there.”

“So...what’s the deal with...” Vic brandishes his phone, still not sure what to call it.

“Deal?” Stu shrugs. “No deal. They were looking for volunteers. _Showcasing diversity,_ that was the phrase. I figured there’s no harm in getting my face out there…” He frowns, refocusing on Vic. “But what, you were coming to knock some sense into me? After everything we’ve been through? Seriously, I thought we’d made some kind of breakthrough.” 

This is not going the way Vic had anticipated, and he’s feeling confused. The memory of whatever it was he had planned to do is getting fuzzier and fuzzier. 

“Let me guess,” Stu is saying. “You got yourself so worked up, you decided to hurtle after me without thinking anything through. Sorry if this is a sensitive subject, but thank _God_ you lost your job, you do _not_ have the temperament of someone who should be allowed to pull guns on civilians.”

“Oh yeah?” Vic closes his eyes for a moment, processing. “And who does have that temperament, in your opinion?”

“Well, no one. But definitely not you. Definitely not me, either. That’s at least one thing we have in common.”

To his own surprise, Vic laughs. He opens his eyes again and looks at Stu, who is watching him warily from the front seat. Suddenly Vic is thinking about the tension in his stomach, about the overwhelming impulse to once again command Stu’s attention. It does feel strangely, powerfully good to see him.

“What,” Stu says. 

“I’m sorry,” says Vic. 

Stu stares at him. Vic supposes he can’t blame him for that.

“You’re right. I don’t have the temperament. Thought I did for years. But I dragged you along with me, put you in all kinds of danger, and then tried to scare you again.” Vic looks out the window into the empty lot. He isn’t used to this. “Guess I still have a lot of personal work to do.”

“Yeah, well.” Stu still sounds cautious, like he might be walking into a new trap. “If you can recognize it, that’s very healthy.”

Vic thinks he’s beginning to recognize something else. How many times had he ignored Stu’s objections and insisted they remain a team? Any Uber driver could have driven him through L.A.; probably plenty of them would have ended the night without using a golf club to beat him black and blue. Even then, he hadn’t wanted to relinquish Stu, not for a second.

When he looks at Stu, Vic realizes with a shiver, he feels possessive.

Vic turns back to Stu and sees that he has been watching his face carefully. And there it goes again. _Impulse control._  

“You wanna come back here?” Vic asks.

He is stunned to see, written all across Stu’s face, that the answer is yes.

But Stu can never just go with the obvious thing. He inhales sharply, turns back to face the front, and grips the steering wheel as if to steady himself. “Does that seem smart to you?” he asks.

“I’d rather be brave than smart,” Vic says.

“That is exactly your problem,” Stu tells him.

“Maybe it’s yours." 

Stu twitches, grinds the heel of his palm into his forehead. Then, with such sudden movement Vic almost jumps, he spins around in his seat, grabbing the headrest to propel himself, and climbs over the center console into Vic’s lap.

Vic lets out another growl and grabs the back of Stu’s thighs, pulling him closer. Stu reaches up and grabs Vic’s face with both hands, pulling him in, kissing him feverishly.

“This,” Stu says when he breaks away, “is _not_ smart, this is stupid, do _not_ take this to mean I approve of––”

“Please shut up,” Vic says, and Stu obeys long enough to latch his mouth onto the side of Vic’s neck.

 _“Stupid,”_ he says again when he breaks away, but he isn’t stopping. Instead he moves his knee to push it between Vic’s legs, and that’s a surprise, somehow; Vic drops his head back and releases a noise from somewhere beyond his control.

Stu is on him with power and confidence that Vic never would have imagined. He pushes Vic’s shirt up and over his head with one hand, tossing it onto the car floor.

Vic is spaced out, borderline delirious. He can’t think of the last time someone moved him around the way Stu is doing now, fumbling with his jeans in the confined space and pushing his hand in to palm Vic through his shorts.

“Is this okay?” Stu asks, always so good, so courteous.

“It’s all okay,” Vic says. “I’m not gonna––all of it, it’s all okay.”

“Okay.” Stu says it like he’s talking to himself, recommitting to the action. “Okay.” He pulls his hand out of Vic’s jeans and grabs them by the belt loops, helping Vic shimmy out of them. Then Stu puts his hand against Vic’s shoulder and pushes him to lie down. Vic goes. 

Above him, Stu losing his shirt, ripping off his shoes and unbuttoning his pants. This is unreality, but Vic likes it.

“Hold on, I’ve got…” Stu leans back across the console, popping open the glove compartment and rustling through it. He comes back victorious, holding up a miniature bottle.

Vic laughs out loud. _“Jesus.”_

“Don’t blame me for the things people leave in my car,” Stu says, grinning too, leaning back over Vic and popping the bottle open. “You wouldn’t believe what this baby’s stashed with. Mace, _two_ pocket knives, a _very_ expensive looking bracelet..” 

“Fascinating,” Vic says. “C’mere.”

But Stu just looks at him, his eyes skimming Vic’s body laid out before him, taking it in. “You sure this is good? I mean, it’s a pretty major turnaround from the last time I saw you.”

“I’m always sure,” Vic says. He’s impatient, feeling that hunger, that aching. _“C’mere.”_  

“Okay,” Stu says. “We don’t have to talk about it now. But that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna talk about it at all.”

And that’s good enough, because then Vic can feel Stu’s hand on his thigh, pushing it up until Vic takes the hint and pulls his knees toward his chest.

He’s hanging half off the seat, and every time he moves he can feel the faded leather seat sticking to his skin; but more important is the feeling of Stu pressing into him, making everything else hazy around the edges.

“Yeah,” he says out loud, because he knows Stu needs the encouragement; and then, sooner than he knows is really smart, but they’ve established being smart isn’t first priority, “More.”

It’s gotta be a sign of trust that Stu doesn’t question him, just pulls his hand away and leans down. He puts a hand to the side of Vic’s face, mutters _Okay_ one more time, and pushes forward.

On the first thrust their foreheads bump. Stu’s eyes flutter closed and he lets out a gasp. Vic turns his head to the side, breathing heavily, trying not to acknowledge that his legs are already wrapped firmly around Stu’s waist. He’s loved this from the first time; that suddenly burning need, and then its full satisfaction, the feeling of wholeness.

Stu is driving into him and Vic is moaning, pitiful really, but what’s he supposed to do with Stu on top of him; nothing in the world but weight and feeling and the salty taste of skin when Vic opens his mouth against Stu’s shoulder.

Stu keeps thrusting against Vic’s most sensitive spot and then losing it again, finding it and losing it, and in a way Vic likes it, likes knowing that Stu is caught up and thinking about himself. Eventually it’s not enough, and he grabs Stu’s hand and guides it to his cock, and Stu starts guiltily, like he can’t believe he’d forgotten.

“You’re good,” Vic promises, and Stu smiles at him, grateful and with such a gentle expression on his face that Vic has to look away.

Turns out a hand on his cock is all he needs, and pretty soon he’s writhing under Stu, breathing as heavily as if he were in the middle of a foot chase. He can feel tension growing in his stomach, then his legs, then, frustratingly, in his neck and the muscles of his face.

Stu presses down hard, brushes his mouth against Vic’s ear, and of course that’s not what _does_ it or anything, but that is the moment the tension finally breaks. Vic convulses wildly, wrapping his arms around Stu, digging his nails in, needing that stability.

He feels himself come onto Stu’s stomach, sensation breaking over him in long waves, until finally he settles sleepily with one leg still loose around Stu’s waist and the other dangling to the floor.

Stu is still hard inside him, and when Vic opens his eyes Stu is watching him, tender and still. 

“You can—“ Vic starts, but Stu is already pulling out. Vic groans, and for a moment could almost imagine going again. But Stu wraps a hand around himself, bracing against Vic’s chest with the other, and begins steadily jerking himself off. 

 _In my mouth next time,_ Vic thinks, and then is overcome with such desire and fear he has to remind himself to breathe slowly.

Stu stares straight into Vic’s eyes the whole time, and that’s a kind of bravery Vic hadn’t even considered up to this point. Pretty soon Stu is panting too, looking broken wide open; Vic watches him come between them too, adding to the mess on Vic’s stomach.

“Fuck,” Vic says.

“Yeah,” Stu says drowsily. He looks at the Vic’s stomach, rising and falling more evenly now. “Aw, man! Don’t move.”

“Gimme a break,” Vic says, but he stays still while Stu finds a tissue in the backseat organizer and gently wipes Vic clean.

“Vic…” Stu says, and fuck his life, here it comes. “I just need to know, is this––”

From somewhere on the floor, Stu’s phone pings. He frowns. “Sorry,” he says, grappling for it. He glances at the screen, and then back at Vic, face contorted like he’s halfway between laughter and exasperation. “Did you call––is this an Uber pool?”

“Shouldn’t you be the one to know that?” Vic says, immediately halfway to the defensive. “Why’s it still going?”

“Oh, sorry, something distracted me but I guess that’s my own fault.” Stu snorts. “I can just decline it.”

“Don’t do that.” There’s a chance to get out of here without having a _talk,_ and Vic is gonna jump on it. He sits up and starts pulling his pants back up. “Drop me at any bar, she won’t know.”

“You don’t think she’ll _smell_ it?”

“Crack a window.” Vic pops the door open and walks around to the passenger seat, letting himself in and buckling up. He can be good too. 

Stu is following his lead, pulling his shirt over his head and clambering back across the console into the driver’s seat. “Just saying, it _is_ a little weird.”

“You need the cash, right? What’s wrong with the cycling thing, anyway, you burn all your money on modern art and fair trade coffee?”

“We put a lot into it, it’s not gonna turn a profit right away,” Stu mutters, pulling his own seat belt around himself. 

“I’ll help,” Vic tells him. “I’ll hand out the in-flight snacks.”

“Naw.” Stu gives him a half smile. “Turns out people rate you higher when you leave them alone.”

“Not surprised.” 

Stu checks his mirrors and puts the car into gear. “That doesn’t mean I expect anything less than five stars from you, though,” he says, looking over his shoulder.

Vic pulls out his phone and grants the requested rating with exaggerated movements. It’s sappy, but when Stu grins, it’s worth it.


End file.
